Young people have so much energy! Especially school kids! It’s like they are on “go” all day and never stop! Amazing! Now, that “never stop thing” creates some real challenges for even the best drivers.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather die than pedal a bike or foot push a skateboard or Razor scooter to school, especially in hundred-degree heat. Children and school age kids do not seem to mind.
When you see kids on bikes, scooters, or skateboards it’s a good idea to stay extra alert and vigilant.
Tips to Help Keep Children Safe as Pedestrians
- Keep your head and eyes on “swivel-mode” checking for motion and movement all around you. You want to see fast moving kids as soon as you can.
- Slow down and drive with caution. As speed increases, when combined with reaction time, vehicles close in on unintended targets much faster.
- Put that phone down! No call or text is worth the risk hitting, harming, or even killing a child!
- Guestimate or project the likely path you think the kids will continue on, but be alert for them to suddenly change direction.
- Never pass by closely to children on their modes of transportation. A pebble, rock, or other road debris can bounce them into your path.
- Better to wait than to race. Rather than trying to race ahead to beat kids to an intersection or crosswalk, ease off the gas and allow them to pass. That 3,000-pound bullet we’re driving way out matches their 50-pound bikes.
- Take a second look when pulling out from a parking space or across an intersection.
- Resist the distractions within your own vehicle. Things like radios, phones, tumbling cargo, and noisy passengers can pull your attention away from the road and what is going on at the most critical times.
- Be especially cautious while driving during early daylight or later at dusk when the grayscale spectrum dominates the landscape. Colors are not as vivid and it becomes much harder to see things.
- Drive with your lights on during the day to improve your visibility for children. It’s strange how they might not see the mass of your vehicle yet can spot your headlights.
Unexpected Moves: Why Kids on Foot Can Be Unpredictable
At one time or another we’ve all seen young children struggling to carry a bulky and unwieldy school project toward their building. Perhaps you remember doing the flimsy model volcano on the big flat board. Blurry-eyed and tired from staying up all night to finish it, you struggled toward the main doors terrified it was going to self-destruct in your bare hands. I think we have all experienced moments like that. So too, today’s children. When we see kids carrying projects and know they could be in that altered frame of reference, we drivers must remain vigilant.
Starting in the late 1960’s students at the University of Washington began a prevalent trend for today. JanSport, a Seattle based hiking and sporting goods company, was producing lightweight daypacks and sold them in a store right next to the campus. Students began buying them for their schoolbooks and papers. If you recently caught an old movie or perhaps a rerun of Lassie, you’ll recall that way back kids used a leather book strap to secure and carry schoolbooks. They’d cinch a stack of books together tightly with the strap and carry them along as a bundle. During the 60s some kids started toting around briefcases and satchels full of books for school. You may have had the one nut in school who split their books evenly and carried two separate satchels, one in each hand. Thank God for the UW and JanSport or who knows what kids would be doing with their books today.
Well, anyway, kids today absolutely load their backpacks to the gills. While the use of textbooks for homework has declined, kids have replaced those with Chromebooks and a wide assortment of technical equipment. We’ll see backpacks stuffed with lunches, after school sports equipment, toys, and personal care products. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime would have been hard pressed to heft one of these and carry it as far as kids do today.
Those heavy backpack loads make kids more top-heavy and it’s not unusual for them to tip off balance and stumble toward the path of oncoming traffic.
Protecting Your Child’s Rights After a School Commute Injury
When your child is injured on the way to school, consult Paul Powell. Have him check out what happened. He can even have private investigators look into situations. When your kid health and wellbeing is at stake, Paul takes care of it. Whether your child requires initial medical follow up, on going treatment, or faces life changing physical or emotional harm, rely on Paul to help all of you through it. Paul Powell. More Lawyer. Less Fee.